Bitreserve Merges Bitcoin and Gold
The bitcoin-based financial services company Bitreserve is merging one of the newest innovations in currency with the world’s oldest, TechCrunch reports .
Through the institutional precious metals trading house Gold Bullion International , Bitreserve has created a new gold standard, linking its bitcoin currency exchange and payment services with gold. Now, using Bitreserve, customers can hold gold in their accounts and convert it to bitcoin to buy goods and services.
Bitreserve users fund their accounts in Bitcoin, which they can choose to convert into any of five “bitcurrencies” – U.S. dollars (USD), euros (EUR), pounds (GBP), yuan (CNY), and yen (JPY) to shield their deposits from the volatility of Bitcoin. At the same time, they can pay in Bitcoin from their Bitreserve accounts. This new initiative can be seen as one more instant conversion option for Bitreserve users, which could become very popular with gold investors.
A Much-Needed Haven From Bitcoin Volatility
Bitreserve chief executive Halsey Minor sees the integration of gold and Bitcoin as the latest step in his company’s push to make Bitcoin more mainstream. He says:
“People don’t want to hold their currency in a wildly volatile form. We allow them to hold value in the way that goods and services are priced.”
The Bitreserve blog announced that their cloud money system now supports gold. Bitreserve members can hold their bitcoin as stable gold value and spend this historic precious metal anywhere bitcoin is accepted:
At Bitreserve we are all about innovating to solve problems and save consumers and businesses time and money. When we opened our doors to the public about a month ago, we provided a much-needed haven from bitcoin volatility by enabling our members to hold their bitcoin as any of five stable real-world currencies but still send and spend bitcoin over the Bitcoin network. [O]ur members can now hold and spend value in two global and decentralized currencies – bitcoin and gold. They can also instantly and at low cost convert value between them, sending or spending bitcoin out of their Gold Card, or sending/spending gold from their Bitcoin Card.”
At Bitreserve, they are using the term “Bitgold” to refer to the new service. That may be confusing because the term “Bitgold” was previously used by Nick Szabo for the cryptocurrency that he proposed before Bitcoin.
What do you think of this initiative of Bitreserve? Comment below!
Images from Bitreserve and Shutterstock.
